Zeitgeist Spam

Second thoughts re: #wookieleaks

I've reread Marc Ambinder's Atlantic piece on #wookieleaks a couple times now and may want to rethink what I've written (see my "Yes we ARE doomed"), or at least index that there other ways this phenomenon can be read.

If I put this under the sign of Jodi Dean's communicative capitalism (see link below), it can be read as a bit of gallows humor/anger from those who know they won't be heard however loudly they scream.

I don't know, of course, the intentions of the tweeters. 90K tweets, 90K intentions, maybe, too. But I do now notice and appreciate that here, at least, the US is cast as the Empire, not the Rebel Alliance. The bad guys, not the good guys.

Download Communicative_capita#21D5BB

In the House of the Hangman 126-129

Yes … remember, as Mom always said, “the worst are filled with a passionate intensity …”

and as Dad always said, “all the young dudes carry the news …”

Me, I need T Rex and all I've got is T V …

Bob, T Rex is great but I think you’re channeling Mott the Hoople (I like the image of Glitter Dad, by the way - Mom always did want him to change how he dressed (remember those jeans??). Mott the H had the *best* line ever:

“You’re not the Nazz … just a buzz … some kinda temporary …” (“Hymn for the Dudes”)

tho T Rex’s “Well you’re slim and you’re weak / You’ve got the teeth of a hydra upon you” has got to be way up there, too.

OnagainAfagan docs?

heck. no time for trivialities here in D.C.

that big guy Haynesworth who gets $12,000 per minute on or off the field FAILED the fitness test yesterday (he couldn’t ‘run’ 50 yards in 12 minuets (!)

And. Ellen Degeneres is LEAVING American Idol!

SHIT! and she still has 3 years on her contract!

I am BOGGLED …

[Note: Sources: comments by Omo Bob (126), JBR (127) and Ed Baker (128, 129) appended to JBR, “Yes, we ARE doomed”, at Zeitgeist Spam, 29 – 30 Jul 010 (I’ve taken some liberties …). Sadly, horribly, but probably truly relevant to my post, and to these comments, is the following excerpt from (the always brilliant) Levi R Bryant, “More OOR and Purpose”, at Larval Subjects, 30 Jul 010:

“Consider, for example, how Luhmann analyzes social systems (which I count as objects) and, in particular, the news media as analyzed in The Reality of the Mass Media. Luhmann treats social systems as communication systems. Their substantiality consists in ongoing communications. Initially we might believe that the function of the news media it to, well, report the news. We might therefore be outraged by all the tripe and fluff we encounter in contemporary news reporting (especially in the United States). However, under Luhmann’s analysis, insofar as the mass media is an autopoietic system, its sole “purpose” is to reproduce itself across time. This entails that the news perpetually faces the question of how to get to the next communication so as to maintain its existence. How does the news media produce new communications so as to continue existing as a system?

There is little here in the way of a purpose such as reporting. Rather, the issue is one of producing new communications. A number of salient features become intelligible when the news media is understood in this way. In recent news, it has become increasingly customary to present opposing points of view, represented by so-called “experts”. Moreover, it will be noted that local news is often pervaded by stories of a moral nature, reporting things like various crimes, various crises such as obesity epidemics, etc., etc., etc. The person that begins with the premise that the purpose of the news is to report rather than reproduce itself will very likely be horrified by these trends (and I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be). However, from the standpoint of the operational closure of the news system, the issue is one of how to reproduce itself. The focus on controversial topics and the presentation of opposing points of view allows for maximal autopoiesis because conflict generates more communication and subsequent communications. Moreover, perhaps one of the so-called experts will say something significant and controversial as Sarah Palin tends to do, creating a controversy, thereby generating reporting for days on in. The case is similar with the morality tales that make up the local news. These morality tales revolving around theft, child abuse, murder, adultery, etc., generate all sorts of commentary by both the so-called experts and the audience in the form of letters to the editor. Those letters to the editor can, in their turn, generate further communications.”

Etc etc. So why should “the news” have any news in it? My bad, I guess. My naïveté. Not for the 1st time. For Omo Bob and Ed]

Yes, we ARE doomed

When Bradley Manning (if it was Bradley Manning) freed the Afghan docs that got distributed by wikileaks he apparently wrote: “god knows what happens now … hopefully, worldwide discussion, debates and reforms. if not … we're doomed.”

Well, Bradley, a week or so into the post-release universe, this is what the “worldwide discussion, debates and reforms ...” have turned into. It didn't take long, did it? Here are some excerpts from a piece by one Marc Ambinder called “The Most Revealing #Wookieleaks”, published in the Politics (!) section in the online version of The Atlantic. Yes, I do have a sense of humor. But this article is symptomatic. It appears that we could kill a million Afghans; we could commit a million war crimes; our young men and women could return home having been driven utterly mad; and that no one really gives a shit.

"The Most Revealing #Wookieleaks

Perhaps the best hashtag ever, but who has time to read all those 90,000 #wookieleaks tweets? ... So here are the top ten as judged by me:

2. We're never going to be able to do planet-building on a place like Endor. %$#@ing backwards Ewoks don't even want us there.(@abumuqawama)

5. Trillions in Imperial war funds have been ending up in the pockets of private bounty hunter guilds! Taxpayers got what? (@thebardingreen)

7. Inquiry reveals cantina footage digitally altered; Han Solo discharged weapon first. (@jeffdcohen)

9. Critics say that #wookieleaks undermines Emperor's "Death Star" strategy  (@cahans)

10. Empire leaders reported to accept captives in exchange for "looking the other way" re: illegal gas mining activities. (@cahans)"

In the House of the Hangman 125

Mutated carrot with dick. Capacitors and resistors and little e-things, more expressive than a Giacometti. Fill em up with a cup from a concrete

espresso machine. Did I dream this? Who is / who was

Anna Chapman? Did I dream Chewbacca riding a giant cute squirrel chasing down Vectoralist Nazis? Oh, for a little boat made of fluff, lighter than twigs …

[Note: Sources: JBR, comments left at several posts by Rebecca Loudon, at Radish King, 28 & 29 Jul 010; for the capacitors etc and the little boat, see Lenny’s Blog, all over the place; “Espresso Solo by Shmuel Linski”, at dezeen, 28 Jul 010; *gamefan 84, “chewy commission fur on fur”, at Deviant Art, 29 Jul 010; Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, “Precarity as a Political Concept, or, Fordism as Exception”, in Theory Culture Society 2008 25: 51 (the reference is to the hacker vs vectoralist “new class relation” notion in McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto)]

In the House of the Hangman 123 & 124

Nobody was quite sure what caused it. An alien pathogen riding the tail of Halley’s Comet? Some government “rage” virus? Radiation

from a downed satellite? Now, of course it’s [REDACTED] so we’ve had to rely on resin, a constantly-changing party line, “a Haiku about

Bang-Bang-Ugh” … s/he “rises” out of your freshly tilled and mulched begonias … we have sometimes played these games til dawn peeps through the airshaft window; go and lie down, the game replays itself on your retina.

Don't touch the coins! His

head will go on fire! Told ya

and while he luminesces, his friend gazes into pools of ever-changing colours: at the moment, he’s gazing into red.

[Note: Sources: 122. “There’s a Zombie on Your Lawn!” (an ad for a Garden Zombie), at ThinkGeek.com; John Cotter, review of Johannes Göransson, Dear Ra, as quoted in JG’s “Review of Dear Ra”, at Exoskeleton, 28 Jul 010; The editors, “Cave Painting: Video Games as Art”, at n+1, 23 Apr 010. 123. Lenny ??, “00424 Box”, at Lenny’s Blog, 23 Jun 010. You have got to check out his work (well, I love it!). I associate it with the “lines of the day”: Ian Bogost’s, “I want an aphoristic ontology. One that can be rendered via screen print on a trucker’s cap” and Tom Clark’s “We've perhaps been here / We will never be back”]

San Precario

[Note: Source: San Precario.info. Don't let the picture fool you: San Precario is neither male nor female, white nor "of color", etc etc. See Art Information for more on San P, and a few shots of him/her/it in action]

In the House of the Hangman 120-122

Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb111163 (pronounced Albin) was submitted in protest of the Baby Naming Law. Rejected. The parents tried

“A” (also pronounced Albin). Rejected. Also rejected: Metallica, Superman, Veranda, Ikea, Stallion, Keenan Got Lucy, Sex

Fruit, Akuma, Pluto, Monkey, and Elvis. @ was rejected tho it’s pronounced ai-ta as in “love him”. Accepted names include Benson and Hedges (for a set of twins), Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter, Google (as a middle name), Lego, and Violence.

TWO surgical catgut vials (one large one small), TWO rows of porcelain human teeth set on wav strips, a complete box of handmade, handlabeled microscope slides, a bird skeleton in lucite, a petrie dish filled with dry blossoms, lavender, and a quartz chip, a clear square box filled with a dry mushroom, skeleton key, and small shell, a clear

square box filled with lichen, a SCORPION in lucite, a peacock feather, a large shell, a HANDSPREAD PINNED dry butterfly, a constellation plate card for ‘leo’, TWO

geode pieces, a small leatherbound blank journal. And a dried-out bat.

Thus, it might be possible to argue for a certain predominance of the aesthetic/affective domain in making sense of politics, a dominance that follows the shift in technology, from production to simulation. It is not enough to ask

what are the technological and political conditions, one must also ask what are the affective and aesthetic conditions: how is it experienced

and what do people think possible? How else can one even begin to make sense of a time when the working class fantasizes about tax cuts while having no chance of ever getting lost jobs back? O San Precario, protect us!

[Note: Source: 120. David K. Israel, Mental Floss, “Oh no, you can't name your baby THAT!”, at CNN, 3 Jul 010. For Jenny Hudson. 121. Jessica-Naomi, “Not sure if anyone wants to spend 300 dollars on a wunderkammer, but if so I have one for sale :)”, at LiveJpournal.com, 27 Jul 010. 122. Jason Read, "The Composition and Decomposition of the Radical Imagination: Remarks on Class Composition”, at Unemployed Negativity, 12 Jul 010; San Precario: “Since February 2004 San Precario, patron saint of precarious, casualised, sessional, intermittent, temporary, flexible, project, freelance and fractional workers, has appeared in various Italian cities. The saint appears in public spaces on occasions of rallies, marches, interventions, demonstrations, film festivals, fashion parades, and, being a saint, processions. Often he performs miracles. Although the first appearances are recorded on 29 February 2004, San Precario has multiplied and materialised in different disguises. Equitable in his choices, San Precario does not privilege one category of precarious worker over another, and he can appear in supermarkets in urban peripheries, in bookstores or, glammed up, at the Venice Film Festival. San Precario is also transgender, and it has appeared also as a female saint. A ‘cult’ has spread rapidly and has led to the development of a distinct and colorful iconography, hagiography and rituals. Appropriating the Italian Catholic tradition of carrying saint statues in processions in urban spaces, the cult of San Precario functions at the same time as détournement, as a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), as carnival. It is also a tactic to make visible issues arising from the increasing casualisation of the work force. At a different level it can be considered a site of mythopoetic production. The story of San Precario, its beginnings, transformations and spreading, is here brought into play to explore the current politics and poetics of precarity in Italy.” See Marcello Tarì and Ilaria Vanni, “On the Life and Deeds of San Precario, Patron Saint of Precarious Workers and Lives”, at Fibreculture 5, from which the preceding quote is taken]

In the House of the Hangman 119

So Bradass87 suggests that “someone I know intimately” has been downloading and compressing and encrypting all this data and uploading it to someone he identifies as

Julian Assange. At times, he claims he himself is leaking the material, suggesting that he has taken blank CDs, labelled as

Lady Gaga's music, slotted them into his high-security laptop and lip-synched to nonexistent music to cover his downloading: “god knows what happens now … hopefully, worldwide discussion, debates and reforms. if not … rah, rah, ah-ah-ah … we're doomed.”

[Note: Sources: Nick Davies, “Afghanistan war logs: Story behind biggest leak in intelligence history”, at Guardian.co.uk, 25 Jul 010, to which I was led by Nina Power, “lady gaga’s world-historical importance”, at Infinite ThØught, 26 Jul 010; Stefani Germanotta, Nadir Khayat, “Bad Romance”. Julian Assange is one of the few true heroes of our time; Bradley Manning, aka Bradass87, ain’t far behind]

"And the big wheel keeps on turning" (and the little wheels do, too)

K sent me this link. It's fascinating and a little bit terrifying to watch.

Worldometers - "world statistics updated in real time"

From the FAQ: "Sources are carefully selected to include only data published by the most prestigious institutions in the world, such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, its data branch FAOstat, the OECD and others (click here for a list of sources). We are currently working on dedicated pages where you can learn more and find sources for each topic."

In the House of the Hangman 118

Strong and what’s more–a vandal’s potpourri! / and the gentleman went mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgrrrrr. He said his name was Art. So if you ever get a call from the Red C know which way he went

or if he entered a vehicle … and exercise more …

and find out more about what’s in the tin, ... [insert full text of “What England Can Teach Us About Gardening”] ... yeah, Art. A-R-T. Robin Hood is a Very Foxy Fellow. Metropolis: City Under Siege. My first sex teacher mrs starrMaui.

[Note: Sources: Robyn Field’s and Raymond Farr’s comments appended to JD Nelson, “Oh, Yer Air or Old Smarts”, at Clutching at Straws, 14 Jul 010, to which I was led by a comment of his re: his The Mad Verse of JD Nelson, left at my Facebook page; results of Google searches on “Strong and what’s more–a vandal’s potpourri! / and the gentleman went”; bits from two 25-yr-old cassette tapes that belonged to Sam and Rose that we used to have to listen to every time we went on a driving vacation. The 1st was some version of Disney’s “Robin Hood”; DC Comics probably issued the 2nd. K and I still have them more-or-less memorized. Don’t ask me why I recall them this morning. Or, go ahead and ask” I am an artist of genius and/or I have no idea and/or and/or]